The present invention relates to a textile printing system, and a plate separation apparatus and method.
Conventionally, textile printing using plates (to be referred to as plate textile printing hereinafter), and textile printing such as ink-jet textile printing expressed by process colors without using any plates (to be referred to as plateless textile printing hereinafter) are known.
In order to achieve identical color reproduction of prints obtained by such textile printing processes, conventionally, an ink-jet textile printer outputs color patches generated based on RGB or CMYK digital data, and an operator visually selects a patch which is similar to the color of a print obtained by plate textile printing. Based on the selected patch color, the operator retouches original data of the print. That is, the colors of plateless textile printing are adjusted to those of plate textile printing. This in part results from the fact that plate textile printing uses only spot color expression.
However, such processes are difficult unless the operator is skilled. On the other hand, when a plateless textile printing system is used as a sample forming machine, and a plate textile printing system is used as an actual production machine, a print with excellent grayscale reproduction that is obtainable by process colors often cannot be obtained by plate textile printing using spot color expression. Especially, it is difficult for plate textile printing to express a CG or photo-like illustration. Hence, it is hard to match color expressions of these textile printing systems, and color expression of a print obtained by a plate textile printing system has never been adjusted to that of a print output in process color expression by a plateless textile printing system.
Therefore, there is no plate separation method in which process color expression is realized by plate textile printing in correspondence with that of a print output from a plateless textile printer.
The present invention has been made to solve the conventional problems, and has as its object to provide a textile printing system which allows a plateless textile printer using process color expression and a plate textile printer to achieve equivalent color expression, and a plate separation apparatus and method.
A textile printing system comprises:
a first textile printer that makes process color expression;
plate separation means for performing a plate separation process for original image data; and
a second textile printer for performing textile printing using plates based on plate data output from the plate separation means,
wherein the plate separation means comprises:
input means for inputting a file name and resolution of plate data to be output, and the number of repetitions of original image data; and
selection means for selecting a conversion table file, a tone curve file, a resolution of original image data, a conversion ink table file, a resolution conversion method, the number of plate data, and a type of repetition of the original image data, and
the plate separation means performs plate separation on the basis of the inputs from the input means and the selections at the selection means.
Note that the selection means selects the conversion ink table file for each ink color.
Also, the number of ink colors of the first textile printer is eight, and the number of plates of the second textile printer is eight.
The plate separation means separates the image data into plates, the number of which is larger by one than the number of ink colors of the first textile printer.
A gray plate is generated in addition to plates corresponding to ink colors.
A textile printing system comprises:
a first textile printer which makes process color expression without using any plates;
plate separation means for performing a plate separation process for original image data; and
a second textile printer for performing textile printing using plates based on plate data output from the plate separation means,
wherein the plate separation means comprises:
input means for inputting a type of repetition of the original image data and a number of times of repetition; and
plate data generation means for generating plate data from the original image data on the basis of the inputs from the input means.
The input means can select one of four-way feed and half pitch as the type of repetition.
The second textile printer is a printer which uses one of a hand textile printing scheme, screen textile printing scheme, roll textile printing scheme, and rotary textile printing scheme.
A plate separation apparatus according to the present invention is a plate separation apparatus which receives image data which is the same as image data input to a first textile printer that makes process color expression without using any plates, generates plate data corresponding to ink colors used in the first textile printer, and outputs the plate data to a second textile printer that performs textile printing using plates, comprising:
input means for inputting a type of repetition of original image data and a number of times of repetition; and
plate data generation means for generating plate data from the original image data on the basis of the inputs from the input means.
A plate separation method according to the present invention is a plate separation method which receives image data which is the same as image data input to a first textile printer that makes process color expression without using any plates, generates plate data corresponding to ink colors used in the first textile printer, and outputs the plate data to a second textile printer that performs textile printing using plates, comprising:
the input step of inputting a type of repetition of original image data and a number of times of repetition; and
the plate data generation step of generating plate data from the original image data on the basis of the inputs in the input step.
A computer readable memory according to the present invention is a computer readable memory storing a plate separation program, which receives image data which is the same as image data input to a first textile printer that makes process color expression without using any plates, generates plate data corresponding to ink colors used in the first textile printer, and outputs the plate data to a second textile printer that performs textile printing using plates,
the plate separation program including:
an input program for inputting a type of repetition of original image data and a number of times of repetition; and
a plate data generation program for generating plate data from the original image data on the basis of the inputs in the input program.